Parental stress and child health

TEAMS https://bit.ly/3AafuYs

Summary

Survey data has shown that parental distress is quite common, with 29% of children in the UK Understanding Society cohort living with at least one parent reporting significant emotional distress. However, few studies have investigated whether parental distress, particularly distress experienced by fathers, during the critical early years period is associated with weight development in their children. In this presentation, Kristiane will discuss the results of her recently published paper, presented at the European Congress on Obesity, where she used data from the Millenium Cohort Study to investigate associations between mothers and fathers distress in early childhood and children’s weight trajectories from 5 to 14 years of age. Her findings underscore how a lack of social, mental health, and socioeconomic support available to parents may have long-term health implications for their children.

About the speaker:
Kristiane is a PhD Student in the Department of Behavioural Science and Health at UCL, funded through the Soc-B Doctoral Training Programme. 

Kristiane’s PhD research focuses on exploring biological, social, and behavioural risk factors for weight development and growth across the first two years of life. She uses data from both the Gemini Twin and Millenium Cohort Study to better understand how social, familial, and genetic factors are related to weight development from the very start of life. Prior to starting her PhD, Kristiane was a Research Assistant for the NIHR Obesity Policy Research Unit (OPRU) and completed her MSc in Health Psychology at UCL.